


two overinflated egos walk into a bar

by rivaini



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Mass Effect
Genre: Crossover Pairings, M/M, i am. so soRRY, see notes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 20:29:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5019340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivaini/pseuds/rivaini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The creature's mouth twisted into a snarl, revealing rows of blunt, formidable teeth against the bluish tint of his face, angular and wide, and not terribly unlike Solas’s own in structure, save for the flat nostrils and secondary set of watchful eyes. Something prickled faintly at the small of his back. Solas was entranced.</p>
            </blockquote>





	two overinflated egos walk into a bar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [duets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/duets/gifts).



> This is literally a joke. This is objectively the worst thing I've ever done with my own two hands. But it happened, and if I could make it more like the episode of Broad City with Alia Shawkat, I would.
> 
> This is for Maria, aka satan's little helper, who made the mistake of (vaguely, half-jokingly) requesting Solas/Javik for their birthday. Parabéns, asshole.

The first time they met, Javik nearly killed him.

Solas did not think it odd to awaken with galaxies shimmering at his fingertips; his own dreams and the winding veins of eluvians long had granted him access to the most strange and beautiful of places, and with the Veil growing thinner, feeling not unlike the worn fabric of his unwashed tunic between his fingers, these destinations grew only more strange. He mused once, nearly aloud to Lavellan by mistake, that his existence felt increasingly like a perverse exercise in liminality. 

It did not alarm him, then, when the starlit corridor he passed through carried him into a womblike coffin of a room, dim, cold, and clean-smelling in a way that he might, centuries later, come to describe as clinical. Solas marveled at the sound of his own footsteps, a thing he strived to eliminate in his youth both for the connotations of grace and for the tactical advantages, but which were impossible to prevent as he walked on the unfamiliar metal grating. The room appeared empty, save for the trough of liquid glowing faintly at its edge.

Solas had no name, no precedent for rounds. They were not arrows but nor did they seem to be magically produced, stinging more deeply and fully than Sera’s bees and burning his skin where they grazed his extremities. The assault rifle— he had no precedent for that, either— fired rounds from the shadows of the room that shredded half his barriers more rapidly than a pride demon’s electric whip. Solas was slammed to the ground, bloodied, half-poisoned before he cast paralyzing energy towards the brief glint of armor he caught sight of in the darkness. Rising from his knees, he crept closer to his stilled assailant, cradling a ball of lightning in the palm of his hand.

The creature was of a moderate height, muscled and broad-shouldered, clad in an extravagant kind of armor that made him appear even bigger. His mouth twisted into a snarl, revealing rows of blunt, formidable teeth against the bluish tint of his face, angular and wide, and not terribly unlike Solas’s own in structure, save for the flat nostrils and secondary set of watchful eyes. Something prickled faintly at the small of his back. Solas was entranced.

The creature spoke, his head the only part of him that yet retained motion. Solas didn’t want to kill him outright. Not yet, anyway.

“You are not one of the primitives,” the creature concluded. “You look like they do, but your energy is ancient. I am far older. What are you?”

“I am called Solas,” he offered, staring directly into the creature’s narrowed yellow eyes, all four of which were beautiful in much the same way a snowy wyvern is. They suggested imminent, captivating danger.

“A Solas is -- what? A pointy human?”

“No, no. Solas is merely my name. I’m an elf. I’m not human at all, in fact.”

“No,” the creature sneered. “But you are as frail, and bony, and strange-smelling as they are. Perhaps stranger-smelling. Release me, pointed human.”

“I’m an elf. I smell fine, I’m certain. And not until I know it’s safe to do so.” 

“It never shall be.” The declaration stirred something in Solas he had thought quieted since his youth, sent his blood singing for the display of power.

“What are you called, then?”

“I am a Prothean, though that does not mean to you what it should. In my cycle, my kind dominated all primitive life. That is the natural way of things.”

“But what is your name?” Solas insisted.  
“If revealing my identity will prevent you from asking further irrelevant questions – I am called Javik.”

There was a pause.

“And you suspect that I am one of these primitives, Javik?” He let a disgusted noise.

“I am unsure,” Javik answered finally, considering Solas with his large, buggy eyes. “None are older or more powerful than I, but few are able to match my skills in battle. Certainly not primitives.”

“I am a god. Or so I’m thought to be.” This, Solas reasoned, was a point so far in a future that seemingly did not bear his mark, perhaps a separate universe entirely, that truthfulness— with maybe a small hint of exaggerated grandeur— could only benefit him. Probably. “The elves call me Fen’harel. The Dread Wolf.”

“Ha! Nothing is dreaded about one so small and wrinkled,” Javik laughed. “No, you are a false god. Some consider my kind to be gods. They are correct. And now, elf, unbind me or die at my hand.”

“I’ll never release you if you insist on insulting me,” intoned Solas, hurt brewing in his throat. His palms crackled with ball lightning, earning a smirk from Javik. “At least enough of my kind remains to be thought of as gods.”

The smirk swiftly faded.

“The request is a simple formality. You think I cannot free myself?”

Solas did not stay long enough to find out. Javik’s eyes and fists glowed an unearthly green as he carried himself away on the outstretched wisps of the Fade.

\--

In his dreams, Lavellan confronted him over and over, wild fists and threats alternating with tearful bargaining, though neither reflected the steady indifference of Lavellan’s true response. One in particular featured Solas in his underclothes, making grand proclamations about what must have been his millionth backup plan to restore the glory of the world he had inadvertently destroyed. As Lavellan pulled away from his kiss, she morphed, growing stouter and muscled, hair receding and face flattening until it was Javik’s, lips curled in a sneer, laughing. “You may not be a primitive, but you are remarkably pathetic even still,” he said, taking Solas’s chin between his thick grey fingers and eyeing his lips as if considering another kiss; a terrifying prospect, given Protheans’ severe lack of lips themselves. Something pressed against his unclothed thigh that clearly did not belong to the original Lavellan. Solas awoke then, full of wounded pride and half-hard, to his own vast annoyance.

Javik made his palms itch. None had heard the truth of Solas’s identity and remained unphased, apart from Lavellan, who had taken the news in her own awkwardly idealistic stride. And while Javik had no knowledge of elven lore, shouldn’t the title of Fen’harel in itself promote, well, dread? Awe? Dread-tinged awe? It seemed to work on humans, of all things. The trappings of Solas’s own reputation to be an exhaustive bore— it distracted from his actual intentions, and with each head bowed in supplication to him came so many more misinterpretations— but he could not force Javik’s smirk, his mockery, his eyes from his own thoughts.

Which is why Solas found himself again in that dim room, weeks later, in spite of every logical reason to never return screaming nonsense at him. Javik nearly laughed him off of the Normandy.

“What is that?” he chuckled, pointing to Solas’s gnarled wooden staff. “That is what you paralyzed me with? Foolish! Primitive!” He cast his head back in deep, resounding laughter, startling Gabby in the engineering room, who had never heard a sound remotely like it.

“If you’re quite finished—“

“Perhaps it is good none of my kind remain. This,” he again gestured dismissively towards the staff, “would be a disgrace. I am disgraced!”

“If you’ll only mock me, perhaps I should take my leave instead,” growled Solas. While the strength of his magic had increased to wild proportions over the past year, his ego grew more and more fragile, like the precarious shell of an already-cracked egg.

“What should I care? Leave, then! Between you and the damned Asari, I shall never know peace.”

“I wish to know more about you, Javik.” He fixed his gaze on Solas, disgust giving way to resigned acceptance. 

As it turned out, they were better off knowing nothing about each other whatsoever. Solas couldn’t recall exactly how the fight broke out— they had discussed presiding over ancient empires (Javik resembled the exact sort of god Solas worked to protect his people from), the isolation inherent in being one of the last of their respective kinds (Javik didn’t care), Prothean history (Javik cared a little more), Solas’s several pitiful failures (Javik’s phrasing, not his)— but at some point verbal sparring shifted to physical, and there seemed no promise that the scuffle would stop short of death.

“Do you not intend to freeze me again, elf? Where is the glory in such tactics?”

Solas grit his teeth and knocked away Javik’s lift grenade with a stone fist, stepping past him and to the edge of the room to gain an advantage from the shift of position. The situation had grown dire. Solas’s barrier danced weakly in deference to Javik’s biotic attacks.

And then— and Solas couldn’t recall how this started either— Javik had him pressed against the wall behind him, lipless mouth crushing against his own, still gripping his rifle. Every inch of Solas’s body felt electrified, inarticulate, utterly useless, and that was before his hand found its way to the tip of Javik’s codpiece. He very nearly ached with want, which, Solas supposed, is what one gets when one has slept only with spirits after hibernating for thousands of years.

Solas found it difficult to carry himself back through the network of eluvians to his hideout the next morning, still blushing a deep scarlet and battling the tender soreness that had settled into his limbs. In the Normandy’s mess hall, Shepard nearly spat out her drink at Javik’s boisterous proclamation of, “Primitives are good for one thing!”

He refused to divulge what this thing was, even despite Vega relentlessly pressing him for details.

**Author's Note:**

> I should probably mention that a) it wasn't meant to be this LONG, b) yes, I do realize Javik basically wall-doms Solas, and c) Solas speaks in (bad) iambic pentameter the entire time. The ASSHOLE.


End file.
